


the fruit is for everyone

by sade12



Category: American Psycho - All Media Types, Taxi Driver (1976)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Blood, Gen, Long Conversations In Cabs, lol i don't know how to tag this, slight dissociation?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 18:23:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10576941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sade12/pseuds/sade12
Summary: travis picks up another jaded member of the new york city sprawl.





	

**Author's Note:**

> listen i know this is going to sound absolutely insane but i have this headcanon where taxi driver and american psycho are set in the same universe, i know it sounds dumb but i'm so in love with it okay. au/crossover type thing, set after the events of taxi driver and in the 80s.  
> i'm super sorry if this is ooc (it probably is) or if there's any spelling or tense errors... i haven't written in so long and i'm trying to get back into it. it's a great form of self expression for me and man i'm trying. consider this a test. there's some super good writers on here and i'm inspired and i'm trying to act on it. hope you like this! and thanks for reading these notes, super sweet of you  
> [inspired by this song, might be more immersive if you listen to it?](https://youtu.be/w73t0_kQSMw?t=4m58s)

The closest thing the feeling was comparable to was looking directly into a mirror.

It was a sobering tick at the back of his neck; the feeling drawing up before a cold sweat, almost. Fundamentally horrifying, but only felt on the inside. Anyone could slide their degenerate ass into his backseat; that was a given, it didn’t matter to him in the slightest. New York City was the home of all sorts of rotting people. But whenever someone did... the unease was familiar.

What his passenger had said, whatever it was, went directly over his head. It sounded murky-like, marginalized by the mechanical squeak of his rearview mirror as he stared attentively; watchful eyes digesting all there was to see. 

He made himself comfortable, steady hands adjusting the blazer of a suit that clearly cost more than everything in Travis’ own apartment combined before breaking out a Walkman with shiny, eye-catching headphones. A briefcase was concealed out of view. His hair is slicked back, taut...

“Driver?”

For a moment, Travis is visibly shaken. The last time he heard such a domineering tone must have actually been during his tours; the voice was cold. He sounded like a corpse. A damn-finely dressed corpse, but a corpse nonetheless.

After gathering his bearings and murmuring a weak ‘uh’, Travis heaves down the meter with the standard _chk_ and pulls off the sidewalk- first accidentally hitting the break instead of the gas pedal- and focuses his gaze on the road, where he assumed it belonged. Instead of tactfully weaving himself out of the situation he’d created for himself, he cleared his throat and darted his eyes a few times at the rearview mirror as always. He was met with deeply furrowed eyebrows and a look he couldn’t even begin to describe. Completely ambiguous. It was as though he’d seen him before.

“So, uh, where you from?”

The silence that grew was trying, even though it only lasted a matter of seconds. “I said I wanted you to drive me to Hell’s Kitchen. You haven’t turned yet, and you should have one block back.”

A forced kind of smile displays itself across Travis’ face. A the-customer-is-always-right smile. Internally, he panics, not sure how to excuse his apparent loss of self awareness, but he’s not sure he needs to. This was just the standard yuppie type; curt, egoistic... _Scum,_ like the rest of them. He doesn’t have to answer to that, now does he? He knows the city like the back of his hand. If whoever this is knows it better, he should have just walked, right?

“Shortcut. Where you from?”

He asks, but it's not like he doesn't already know the answer. The answer is somewhere in municipal Manhattan, in some pretentious high-rise that the rest of the city could only drool over. When he gets this answer, he supposed, he wouldn't listen. He would shrug it off and remain under the fade of the road, as well as turn the rearview so he could look at something that made him less anxious.

Eyes bouncing between the road and the reflection of the rearview mirror, the meter chugged along steadily and the deep feeling of dread residing within his gut only deepened. Every single time his eyes fell onto his passenger’s it was like he was locked into a stone cold gaze; staring into an abyss. In those eyes, he saw nothing. He swallowed dryly. It felt like staring at his old guns when he was about to buy them, it felt like Iris’ hands on his belt.

It began to lightly rain.

The fact of the matter was, Patrick wasn’t choosing to be evasive. Rather, he was growing impatient, and when he loses patience, things get rudely brief. Some sordid cabbie didn’t need to know information as priceless and personal as where he lived; that’s almost as dire as asking for his credit card information. What, did he think he wanted to be robbed by someone who’s quite likely never even touched an Italian made suit?

The driver’s eyes read of naivety. _Naivety,_ naivety so heavy they were reminiscent of many people he worked with. The murmuring, the everything. The _small talk._ Seldom did Patrick aim to kill men anymore, yet the mantra was manifesting inside of his mind...

On went the mask, and his cliche used car salesman smile. He began mentally racking a criteria of appropriate responses. “Manhattan.”

Travis scoffed. “Yeah, I could tell.”

Something about that response struck the wrong chord. Patrick’s head cocked forward; not to give the impression he was interested, not in the slightest. Moreso to feign interest. His mouth remained carefully set. 

“There’s a lot of guys like you who need late cabs around here,” Travis said. He could almost see the confusion as he glanced at the rearview mirror once more. “I can tell, you probably have a good job. I know you have a good job. You can walk around with clothes like that. I can’t do that. I mean, I could, but... You know, that’s neither here nor there.”

Travis chuckled to himself. As a response, his passenger blinked twice before leaning his head to the side. Just slightly, but enough. His expression remained concrete.

Streetlights reflected on the damp windshield, wipers going this way and that as rain softly bombarded the windows. Red streetlights, green streetlights faded in the oblivion of the city behind them. 

“My career is irrelevant.”

“You know something? You just reminded me of something. A friend of mine said something once, something like, ‘a man is his job’...”

Suddenly, a large knot of tension unravels within Patrick’s chest. Sure, there’s a body in the trunk, all his doing, but that fades for the shortest of moments. And he tells himself to sit there, to not respond to that, to not let his mind wander, but all he can do is stare forlornly out the rain-soaked backseat window and ghost repeat what he just heard, following it by an audibly blunt ‘hmm’. That enough was all he needed to drown out the rest of Travis' speech.

Willing himself to ignore how severely that statement fragmented his demeanor, his lips absentmindedly part. “A man... is... his... job.”

“...Doesn’t make much sense to me. I’m thinking there’s got to be more to life than that. Than this,” Travis corrects himself, turning halfway to look at the backseat. He forces out a breathy sort of chuckle, immediately gaining traction from Patrick. “Think so?”

Patrick stares at the back of Travis’ head when he turns back, fully unsure of what to say next. His mood flips, and suddenly he's on the offensive. His hands shake relentlessly. He blurts, “The human capacity for curiosity cannot be subverted.”

A brief flicker of the mask, truly. The result of a moment’s worth of mental disorganization, a non-calculated error at brass tacks. However, it seemed to sit well with the driver, who made a respectful ‘huh’ as a response.

“You’re right,” Travis murmurs under his breath. The cab cruises gently across puddles into Hell’s Kitchen. “You’re right. I guess I never thought about it that way. Sub-ver-ted.” At this point, however, he was talking to himself.

Upon gliding to a screeching halt, Patrick practically tore his wallet out of his suit pocket, firing random bills at Travis before scooting out himself and dragging his belongings along with him. With a stretch and a long-release sigh, Travis emerged from his seat and into the drizzle to unlock the trunk, meeting the man in the same location seeming quite anxious.

After an odd exchange in which he declined all and any help as he attempted to carry the life-sized, strange ‘laundry’ with him in a single hand, dragging it away instead of quite holding it, Travis merely stood there. The air felt congested, thick. About-facing, he leaned against the rear end of the cab, sliding one hand back into the trunk for support as he looked at the crisp pair of one hundred dollar bills he’d been mistakenly given, now dotted with transparent raindrops. The man had refused to listen when he tried to give them back, and he was long gone.

It was a lot to take in, to say the least. Sliding back into his seat, he began to write down a description of the man for his journal, wiping his forehead free of sweat with his spare hand. 

As he drew it back, he noticed it was matted with blood.


End file.
